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Yo-kai Watch (franchise)
is a series of role-playing games developed and published by Level-5. Each game has its own unique story, Yo-kai, quests, and characters. The franchise has released games, merchandise, and an animated series worldwide. In Japan, it has managed to become one of the most popular monster-collecting franchises. Overview History Initial Creation and Concepts With the success of ''Professor Layton, Inazuma Eleven, and Little Battlers Experience, Level-5 decided to create a new IP that would last for a very long time. They used Doraemon as their inspirationhttps://www.famitsu.com/news/201404/21051460.html, resulting in the creation of Yo-kai Watch. Planning and development started in 2010https://diamond.jp/articles/-/56267, and their first step into the development was to make the player explore freely and walk around in an open-world environment. The franchise was announced at Electronic Gaming Expo at Los Angeles in 2011, where the game was shown running on the . The game ended up being repurposed for the Nintendo 3DS. The manga adaption of Yo-kai Watch was first released in Japan on December 15, 2012, seven months before the game's release. Rise to popularity in Japan When Yo-kai Watch came out in Japan, it sold 53,000 copies in its first week. It sold a total of 1.29 million copies in 2014, becoming one of the best-selling games on the Nintendo 3DS. The franchise's popularity did not skyrocket until the release of Yo-kai Watch 2 on July 2014. The game made the franchise popular among many demographics, and the Yo-kai Watch anime series became one of the most-watched animated shows in Japan alongside other popular ones like ''Doraemon'' and ''Detective Conan''. As a result of the massive boom of popularity, the franchise has made many crossovers in Japan with popular characters from other franchises. Its popularity in Japan led to Yo-kai Watch becoming a phenomenal creation. As of July 2016, the franchise has sold 10,438,903 copies in Japan alone. This amount excludes digital sales.Yo-Kai Watch Sells More Than 10 Million Copies in Japan Release in the West Audiences outside of Japan became interested in the Yo-kai Watch franchise upon seeing Yo-kai Watch 2''s massive success in Japan. Plans for localization were considered when the franchise was at the peak of it's popularity in July-August 2014https://www.polygon.com/2014/8/20/6049643/youkai-watch-international-release-2015, along with the tentative title originally being called ''"YO-Kai Watch"''https://diamond.jp/articles/-/56267?page=4. It was further confirmed in December 2014 during the Japanese release of ''Yo-kai Watch: The Movie, when Hino said that they would be bringing the anime series overseas.https://watchofyokai.com/youkai-watch-heading-westward/ The western localization of Yo-kai Watch franchise would later be announced in 2015, with Hasbro confirming to produce the toys, and the anime being dubbed by notable voice actors. More details on the games and anime were revealed at Electronic Gaming Expo 2015, where they announced a fall release in the North American market, alongside the merchandise and the anime series. When the games and anime were released in North America, several elements had to be modified for a western audience. The most notable example is changing the location of Springdale from Japan to an unspecified location in the United States, even though a lot of the Japanese aesthetics remain. The localization changes are notably present in the English dub of the anime series, which includes renaming certain foods and painting over Japanese text. After the video game, anime series and manga was released in Europe in Spring 2016, it received better sales in that territory, especially in France, Spain and Italy to an extent. The video game sold 650,000 copies compared to 360,000 sales, which is almost twice the amount of the sales in North America. The initial success in both of those territories warranted a localisation for several future games in the series, along with dubbing for future seasons. Games Main Series Spin-offs Collaborations Mobile Games Regional Box Art Differences Main Series Spin-offs References Category:Media